Posts tagged ‘candi’

Let’s be honest, when it comes to the hobby of home brewing from time to time even the most studious brewing enthusiast will make mistakes. From stuck fermentations, to soured batches, and even the occasional exploded carboy history proves that we all learn the most when we can learn from our mistakes. With that in mind I present what will likely be the first in a long line of mistakes that I will make in my beer making journey in the hopes that other brewers can avoid the obvious traps into which I fell.

Therefore I present a brewers guide in how not to prepare blank yeast slants. I repeat: Do not follow these directions if you want to make functional yeast slants.

In a previous post I have discussed the benefits of Belgian Candi Sugar and have walked through the simple process of making your own. Using the adjunct in your brews usually involves adding the sugar 5 minutes before flameout. However, when adding the sugar at this stage time is needed before the solid mass fully dissolves and incorporate itself into the wort.

One way to to lessen the amount of time needed to incorporate the candi sugar into the wort and subsequently retain as much of its characteristics as possible is to preprocess the belgian candi sugar into a syrup form. The good news is that once you have in your possession some belgian candi sugar converting it to belgian candi syrup is a very simple task that we will walk through in the following tutorial.

Update: Thanks to continued (6 years!) interest in this post the content has been organized and updated into a convenient ebook format which can be downloaded from Amazon. Enjoy!

I have used Belgian Candi Sugar in severalbrews thus far and have found it to be one of my favorite adjuncts to use throughout the brewing process. Its use in the production of a beer can raise the alcohol content for use in styles such as Belgian dubbels and trippels without unnecessarily stressing the yeast or introducing undesired body characteristics to the beer.

Typically fermentation occurs when a desired strain of yeast is introduced to a solution or compound where sugars (specifically disaccarides or monosaccharides) are present. If compatible disaccharides such as sucrose are present the yeast must first break down this sugar into its fermentable monosaccharides of glucose and fructose by producing the enzyme such as invertase. However, the yeast must perform extra work in order to produce this enzyme instead of its more desirable job of fermentation. So, rather than forcing the yeast to perform this extra step during the fermentation stage it may be more desirable for the brewer to provide the sugars in their component simple sugar compounds. Thus enter the wonderful adjunct known as belgian candi sugar.

The idea for this brew presented itself after doing some research into various brewing adjuncts- specifically Candi Sugar. After reading how simple the process is to create this adjunct I decided to drag out a sauce pot and try my hand at inverting some sucrose molecules to make some amber colored candi sugar syrup. Having achieved what appears to be a level of success the question was then raised: On what kind of beer recipe should I use this liquid buffet for yeast? After some Google-fu the answer became crystal clear: a Belgian-style wheat beer.